41 These written by name came in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and struck their tents, and the Meunim who were found there, and destroyed them utterly to this day, and lived in their place; because there was pasture there for their flocks.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
The habitations - Rather, "the Mehunim" (compare 2-Chronicles 36:7), called also "Maonites" (see Judges 10:12 note).
And these written by name,.... Before in 1-Chronicles 4:34,
came in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah; as Dr. Lightfoot (m) thinks, not within the first fourteen years of his reign, when the Syrian army was abroad, and none dost peep out, but in his last fifteen years, when the army was destroyed and gone:
and smote their tents; the tents of those who dwelt there for the sake of feeding their flocks, and whose pasturage the Simeonites wanted:
and the habitations that were found there; or the Meunaim or Maonites, which the Septuagint Version here calls Mineans, a people sometimes mentioned along with the Philistines, and others: see Judges 10:11.
and destroyed them utterly unto this day: to the writing of this book; they had not then recovered their possessions:
and dwelt in their room, because there was pasture there for their flocks; which was the thing they were in search of.
(m) Works, vol. 1. p. 111.
The above-mentioned Simeonite princes, with their people, fell upon the peaceful little people of the Hamites in the days of Hezekiah, and smote, i.e., destroyed, their tents, and also the Meunites whom they found there. The Meunites were strangers in this place, and were probably connected with the city Maan in the neighbourhood of Petra, to the east of Wady Musa (cf. on 2-Chronicles 20:1 and 2-Chronicles 26:7), who dwelt in tents as nomads, with the Hamites in their richly pastured valley. ויּחרימם, and they destroyed them utterly, as the Vulgate rightly renders it, et deleverunt; and J. H. Mich., ad internecionem usque eos exciderunt. The word החרים, to smite with the curse, having gradually lost its original religious signification, came to be used in a wider sense, to denote complete extirpation, because all accursed persons were slain. Undoubted examples are 2-Chronicles 20:23; 2-Chronicles 32:14; 2-Kings 19:11; Isaiah 37:11; and it is to be so understood here also.
(Note: Bertheau ignores this secondary use of the word, and has drawn from יחרימם the extremely wide inference, that the Simeonites, impelled by holy enthusiasm, arising from the wondrous deliverance of Judah from the attack of the Assyrian power, and the elevation of feeling which it produced in the community, and filled with the thought awakened by the discourses of the great prophets, that the time had come to extend Israel's rule, and to bring the conquered peoples under the curse, just as was done in the time of Joshua, had undertaken this war of annexation. But there is unfortunately not a single trace of this enthusiastic thought in the narrative of our verse, for it knows no other motive for the whole undertaking than the purely earthly need to seek and find new pasture lands.)
"Until this day," i.e., till the composition of the historical work used by the author of the Chronicle, i.e., till the time before the exile.
*More commentary available at chapter level.